European Sport Sponsorship Worth Close To £5bn

A new report has placed the value for the European sport sponsorship market at
just under £5bn – a 37% growth in expenditure since the year 2000.

The ‘Driving Business Through Sport 2007’ report, published by International
Marketing Reports, indicates that an annual spend of £4.7bn is outlayed on sport
sponsorship across Europe.

The report also showed that the biggest trend detected is in the emergence of
the financial services sector as the largest investor in sport.

In 2000 the sector accounted for less than 8% of the value of sponsorship
deals, and trailed the motor and alcohol industries.
The financial services
sector is now in first position with 13% of the value of all deals.

In the UK the figures are even more marked, with financial services
representing 22% of deal value, 13% ahead of alcohol and IT which are each on
9%.

Football receives more sponsorship cash than any other sport, accounting for
£1.3bn (38%) of expenditure with motor sport coming second with receipts of
£1.09bn (32%) with no other sport breaks the 4% barrier.

The report also shows that, following the withdrawal of tobacco, several
industries have made big new investments in sport.

The fastest growing sectors are energy, gambling and airlines, which
collectively now account for 9% of European spend, up from 3% in 2000.

Sport accounts for 86% of the total expenditure with arts and broadcast
sponsorship taking 7% and 5% respectively (other is 2%).

Germany is Europe’s biggest sports sponsorship market with estimated
expenditure of £1.8bn (33%) of the market with the UK the second largest on
£975m (17%).